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Comments: 86 +-   World of Warcraft Achievement System Rumored on Tuesday June 10 2008, @06:23PM

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday June 10 2008, @06:23PM
from the one-more-reason-to-avoid-the-daylight dept.
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Kotaku has the merest hint of a rumor about a possible achievement system coming with Blizzard's Wrath of the Lich King expansion. "You know what World of Warcraft players really need? Another reason not to get up out of their chair, and Blizzard might be giving that to them in the form of in-game achievements in the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. According to DeathKnight.info, players in the Wrath of the Lich King alpha can type /achievement to bring up a screen like the one above, which shows various achievements that can be performed for points, which will more than likely then go towards buying gear and such."
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  • I'm so over Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheGeneration (228855) on Tuesday June 10 2008, @06:28PM (#23738201) Journal
    I played for a couple of years... but man... what's the point?

    It's just a giant life force sucking treadmill.

    • Re:I'm so over Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sklyan (1263518) on Tuesday June 10 2008, @06:35PM (#23738297)

      I played for a couple of years... but man... what's the point?
      The sense of fulfillment you get from any hobby -- be it building model planes, or collecting bottle caps. Call me an existentialist, but you can step back from any aspect of life and ask "what's the point?" and you will generally find that there isn't one.

      • Re:I'm so over Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Moridineas (213502) on Tuesday June 10 2008, @06:45PM (#23738413) Journal
        That's true and I agree with you (I've argued the same point on slashdot before--who cares if people have fun doing it, it's up to them)

        but I think the GP is referring more generally to the feeling of disillusionment/ennui? many people seem to feel after falling head over heels into WoW. I played soon after the game came out, and was very addicted. I then stopped and it was like ... crap, what I was doing, I could have done X,Y,Z etc instead. Of course I reactivated my account 2 years later, played for a couple months, and felt the same thing again, so I obviously didn't learn my lesson :-P

        I've heard similar reactions from others.

      • Re:I'm so over Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by silentbozo (542534) on Tuesday June 10 2008, @06:59PM (#23738641) Journal
        If I build a model plane, I can put it up on my mantle, gift it to someone, and take the skills I developed building that and put it towards other items requiring fine motor skills and and a sense of art and history.

        I think someone mentioned in a post regarding WOW on a different Slashdot thread that raiding as part of an established group taught them how to manage time, coordinate with other people, and build leadership skills.

        Pretty much, you get out of a hobby what you put into it. If it's just a way of killing time, then all you're going to get out of it is a lot of dead time. If your reason to play is the social dynamics (I knew people who played because their friends had moved away, and it was the regular "meetup"), then I think the test would be if these social networks survive beyond the game.

        With that said, I detest games that require you to stay on the treadmill to "keep up". At least when I do work I hate during normal working hours, I get paid...
        • I played wow for a while and I mostly enjoyed my time playing it (I quit when I didn't enjoy a lot of it and didnt have the time to put in for the stuff I did enjoy).

          I feel like I developed some better team play skills (especially with regards to a fixed role) that have helped me a lot to be a better player in Team Fortress 2. They may not be particularly useful life skills but they helped me to do better in another activity so there is some value there. I sold the account which if I remember right came

        • So don't (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Moraelin (679338) on Wednesday June 11 2008, @03:57AM (#23744267) Journal

          With that said, I detest games that require you to stay on the treadmill to "keep up". At least when I do work I hate during normal working hours, I get paid...


          The bleeding obvious answer is: so don't stay on the treadmill. Go do whatever keeps you entertained, when it keeps you entertained.

          I'm somewhat surprised how many people seem to, well, think they have some kind of _duty_ to achieve some level, get some item, etc. Or in some pathological cases think they somehow prove their penis size by how many level 70's they have and with what gear. So they grind and work and miss the whole point of having fun and/or making friends.

          The game between levels 1 and 69 is _the_ meat of the game. That's the zones you're supposed to explore, enemies you're supposed to test yourself against, the quests and bits of story you're supposed to discover, etc. That's the actual game. It's some hundreds of hours worth of content.

          And it sorta amuses me to see some people try to skip the actual game, or even use some bot to skip it for them, just so they too can then willy-wave about having a level 70. And then get stuck in an endgame grind which is no more than a repetitive chore for people who've finished the actual game and don't know when to quit.

          It's akin to trying to skip most of the LOTR trilogy, just to end up watching the last 5 minutes in a loop, for months.

          So basically, then just don't stay on a treadmill. Realize that levels and gear are there just

          A) to give you some sense of making progress,

          B) so you can practice your new abilities and tactics one at a time, instead of dumping 60 icons upon you from the start, and putting you in front of Kil'jaeden before you even know what they all do, and

          C) to gently guide you about in which order you're supposed to go through the story and quests. Among other thing _because_ that's the actual game, some hundreds of hours and thousands of quests, which you're supposed to play and experience. Not just click an "I win!!!" button and be over with it.

          But there is no obligation to keep up with anyone or anything. There is no par time that you have to beat. And it's not some shameful failure to take things at your own pace, do the things you feel like doing, and generally just enjoy the game.

          In other words, the game is about and consists of the road, not just the destination.

          And if you think that that road, in fact the game itself, is just a treadmill, well, you can just quit it now. Because it doesn't get any better. Once you're done with that "treadmill", there is no grand reward waiting for you, and no "meat of the game" that begins at level 70. What happens when that "treadmill" finally ends, is that it spits you right into the tarpit of a repetitive and pointless grind that's there just do give you something to do while you wait for the next segment (i.e., expansion pack) of the actual game.
      • the achievement fulfillment you get from building model planes, or collecting bottle caps, stay as they are. each of the becomes a permanent piece in your collection. they do not get obsolete with yearly introduced expansions and get thrown away.

        • Re:not quite (Score:4, Insightful)

          by BigDork1001 (683341) on Tuesday June 10 2008, @08:48PM (#23740469) Homepage
          Lets flip that around a bit. My WoW hobby doesn't leave crap scattered all over the house and piling up in a closet somewhere.
          • Well, that's not the experience of most people's WoW hobby...
            • That IS pretty bad :). Strangely enough though, the only monitor I've ever had to screen burn was an LCD. Yeah, yeah, I know. That's supposed to be impossible. It happened though. I had a Hyundai Imagequest L70A. Even when booted into Linux, there was a little "Start" button (from Windows) burned into the corner of the screen. Other edges of the monitor were also distorted, almost as if the edges had melted just a lil. The monitor completely died about 3-4 weeks later.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Flamora (877499)
          And who's to say the memories of what you've done don't stay with you? I played WoW for about two years starting on release day, and I still have all the videos that I shot (I was my guild's lead videographer) of my guild's first kills of every boss in the game up to the Four Horsemen in Naxxrammus. Sure, we never scored any world firsts and only had one server first, but I enjoyed the camaraderie that my guildmates and I had, and I enjoyed the experience of being given a puzzle and working with 39 other pe
          • with the examples they have given, ie model airplanes, you have both the memory and the thing to show people. what you have are only images of memories.
            • And you are posting on Slashdot. What do you have to show for it...only memories and the ability to see your messages of the past. If we go with this stupid model airplane thing, you should have been making a model airplane instead of posting on Slashdot.

              We do a lot of stupid things to pass the time and enjoy ourselves. Judging someone on how they spend their free time is pretty sad. And I am tired of coming on Slashdot and reading people telling people how to live their lives and then spouting off some

              • And you are posting on Slashdot. What do you have to show for it...only memories and the ability to see your messages of the past. If we go with this stupid model airplane thing, you should have been making a model airplane instead of posting on Slashdot.

                dont post again, if you are gonna make such shallow analogies, for you wont get an response for the second time.

                with your logic its no point chatting with your spouse or your parents either.

                We do a lot of stupid things to pass the time and enjoy ourselves. Judging someone on how they spend their free time is pretty sad. And I am tired of coming on Slashdot and reading people telling people how to live their lives and then spouting off some libertarian philosophy on how no one should interfere with their lives. Isn't that just a tad hypocritical?

                ill tell you what is hypocritical. what is hypocritical is delegating your hobby to pass the time to the hands of a company which is bent on just making you pay continually and doing that by regularly introducing stuff that will make whatever you did obsolete, a thing of the past, zero, nada, zilch, leaving only mem

                • You know you can use the shift key to capitalize letters right? You seem to know where the "." and the "," keys are as well, the "'" key is relatively close to them. Really. Just try it. It's not that difficult.

                  ill tell you what is hypocritical. what is hypocritical is delegating your hobby to pass the time to the hands of a company which is bent on just making you pay continually and doing that by regularly introducing stuff that will make whatever you did obsolete, a thing of the past, zero, nada, zilch, leaving only memories.

                  You've failed to mention why that's hypocritical. Care to explain? Also saying WoW only leaves you with only memories is not really true. Especially in a game that involves social interaction. If you're not a total jackass to people over the internet, you can actually make friends. I know

                  • you either didnt read, or ignoring what i wrote.

                    in wow you have only your memories. everything else, and what memory you are gonna have next is at the whim of a lead developer in a software company. and that company does not have a good track record of caring for the players lately.

                    in everything else that has been given as example, you are the decision maker when it comes to your hobby.
            • So grab a figure print. Just having a physical model doesn't invalidate the original poster's point. What's the point in going out in dancing? No physical thing there either. It's simply that people do things because they're fun. If you have fun doing something, then do it. If you're not having fun, then don't do it. But to step back and try to convince yourself that "whoa, this if fun but I shouldn't be having fun this way. I should have fun in a more socially acceptable manner" is a bit strange.

              As
              • in dancing, what you do doesnt get obsolete, or useless either. if you learned salsa, it stays with you. what you know doesnt get reduced to nothing with planned, regular release of a yearly 'salsa expansion'.
                • But of the electric slide is hot next year you need to learn something new ;). It could even be argued that since salsa never changes, then it gets stale too fast and people would get bored doing that instead of sticking with something that gives them a changing set of objectives (not saying I agree with that, I'm just playing devil's advocate).

                  The point is simply that if one enjoys doing something, then they enjoy it. Coming back with an endless supply "BUT WITH PB&J, YOU GET TO EAT IT!!!" proves not
                  • electric slide you learn next year wont risk being obsolete within 1.5 months of its appearance with a patch.

                    leaving one's enjoyment and the way its conducted to the whims of a company's lead developer is not wise. if blizzard was like google, if it cared for its players' enjoyment like google fought u.s. govt for its users' privacy, it would be acceptable to do it. but it isnt.

                    blizzard is just an underling of quarterly profit greedy conglomerate vivendi now. and its entire development approach has be
                • Disco isn't dead? You have nightly waltzes playing in all the hottest clubs near you? The break-dancers are no longer trying to push the limit and do something new? The dance clubs play all their music for free and you don't need to pay every time you go? They aren't trying to make money off your entertainment?

                  My ability to lead a raid translates to the next expansion, or the next game. The club I used to dance at no longer plays music I like. I guess my dancing skills have gone obsolete, as there is

      • If by "point" you mean there's some large, enduring justification for doing something, then yes, nothing has a point because we, the planet, and the universe will die. But if you mean ANY justification, things can most certainly have points. I don't need any better reason than pleasure and love to have sex, even though pleasure is fleeting, love is fragile, and eventually I'll die. Likewise, I play video games to have fun, pointless as it may be. And I stopped playing WoW because it stopped being fun.

        If

      • The sense of fulfillment you get from any hobby -- be it building model planes, or collecting bottle caps. Call me an existentialist, but you can step back from any aspect of life and ask "what's the point?" and you will generally find that there isn't one.

        I think the point is that grinding is not the hobby but rather what you have to do to get things to enjoy the hobby.

        It would like not be able to build your models until you've actually held down a full time job to pay for the models, paint, and glue BUT e

    • Re:I'm so over Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TitusC3v5 (608284) on Tuesday June 10 2008, @06:54PM (#23738553) Homepage
      I played for a couple of years... but man... what's the point?

      Well, this may be a shot in the dark, but maybe, just maybe, people find the various grinds in the game to be...fun? Far too many people get caught up in the constant gear and leveling treadmill to really focus on what should be the goal of the game - enjoying yourself.

      On a related note, this system is more or less a direct copy of LotRO's deed system. There's a running commentary on it right over over at the LotRO forums [lotro.com].

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by merreborn (853723)

        On a related note, this system is more or less a direct copy of LotRO's deed system.

        That's okay, Turbine has cribbed a few features from WoW too. e.g., in their first MMO, Asheron's Call, they recently introduced a quest that's virtually indistinguishable from the various WoW deck quests (deck of warlords, deck of portals, etc. etc.). Hell, the whole LOTR UI looks a lot more like WoW than it does Turbine's previous games...

        There's an awful lot of 'borrowing' in the MMO industry.

      • Xbox live surely predates LotRO. And I'm sure we can find something even before that. In fact, lots of games (just not MMO's) has similar stuff. Madden's been doing it for years and years.

        And more to the point I'd think Warhammer Online's upcoming version of this is the one they're really after. LotRO's version is just shorta shabby.
      • They also added something like this to Guild Wars (from which Lotro borrowed it, btw.)

        It kinda sucked and is indirectly responsible for sorry state it's PvE is in nowadays.

      • Re:I'm so over Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Toby_Tyke (797359) on Wednesday June 11 2008, @04:21AM (#23744431) Journal
        Well, this may be a shot in the dark, but maybe, just maybe, people find the various grinds in the game to be...fun?

        I have never played WOW, but my housemate is a huge WOW addict who will regularly spend his entire weekend playing it. And I mean the entire weekend. Toilet and food breaks, but nothing else.

        But the interesting thing is that he seems to derive almost no enjoyment from playing it. All he ever seems to do is complain constantly. "Oh for fucks sake, I've got to kill $x of $y!". "I've been doing this for an hour!". "Now I've got to go there!". Non-stop whining. The only positive things he ever says about his WOW playing are things like "I have X gold", or "I went up X levels this weekend".

        Now as I said, I'm not a WOW player, or an MMORPG player at all, so I expect a lot of them are going to reply and tell me how wrong I am, but here's my theory. I think that some WOW players, like my house mate, do not actually enjoy playing the game. They enjoy the sense of achievement they get from having 70 levels and a shitload of virtual gold. The hours of grind required to get there are simply the price they have to pay to get that. That's why you hear so many players complaining about the "timesink". They aren't having fun. They just have to slog through it to pick up the next level.

        Before you all start screaming at me, I'm not saying all MMO players are like this, just that I've noticed some are.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by BobMcD (601576)

        Well, this may be a shot in the dark, but maybe, just maybe, people find the various grinds in the game to be...fun?
        Agreed. Or to try and put it another way, since all of life is a grind, so why not select the most pleasant version of it?

      • People keep saying this "oh man, that's just a copy of XYZ" as if it's a bad thing. In all products and technology I wish people would copy more the good stuff from their competitors. As a customer I'm the one benefiting from that.

    • I used to think exactly as you did. Then, I realized that the problem was my inability to moderate my play (because I had so much fun playing WoW). If you feel like you're wasting time on some entertainment outlet, you're probably doing it too much at the expense of your real life and real obligations.

      BTW, I've stopped playing precisely for that reason. But, I had a hell of a lot of fun playing and I can't blame Blizzard for creating such a phenomenal product.

    • I played for a couple of years... but man... what's the point? It's just a giant life force sucking treadmill.

      Well, the 8/9 hours a day I, and many others, spend at work aren't nearly as emotionally rewarding as enjoying a good game or other distraction. You must have got some kind of enjoyment out of it during that time?

      -- Free Playstation 3, Wii and XBox 360 [free-toys.co.uk]
    • I played for a couple of years... but man... what's the point?

      Going out on a limb here...but fun?

      For the non-hardcore it just replace time sitting in front of the TV.
  • I heard that in the upcoming sequel to WoW you will get to control a character who plays WoW, it's called World of World of Warcraft. Here's the announcement:
    http://www.theonion.com/content/video/warcraft_sequel_lets_gamers_play [theonion.com]

  • Congratulations! (Score:5, Funny)

    by BZWingZero (1119881) on Tuesday June 10 2008, @06:33PM (#23738285)
    Achievement unlocked: No life. Achievement value: 1000

  • So....? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Stickerboy (61554) on Tuesday June 10 2008, @06:45PM (#23738405) Homepage
    This is just another resource you grind for in the game, from Gold to Honor to Arena Points and Arena Rating to Tokens in instance drops. I think any innovation would have to be in the rewards, like introducing a Traits or Perks system like in Fallout. More raid gear equivalents as a reward would be redundant... you can get that simply by endless losing in Battlegrounds.

    From the attention list though, it looks like they're focusing on casual players... "Super Quest Dude", various quest chains, etc. That's a welcome addition for those of us that don't have endless hours to play every day.
    • Somehow I get the feeling that, a short time after the expansion comes out, it will be just like it is now. Every time I step into a PvP event, I'll be facing a team of basement-dwellers that can (somehow) afford to grind rep/honor/arena points/badges 20 hours a day, so they're wearing the best possible gear in the game. Every time I'm out trying to quest, similar people with winning personalities will take great pleasure in blasting the shit out of me with their tier-whatever or uber-gladiator gear, with

  • Some Possible Achievements (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bwana Geek (1033040) on Tuesday June 10 2008, @07:45PM (#23739483) Journal
    - Bathed
    - Went outside
    - Eyes adjusted to natural light
    - Talked about something not WoW-related

    These achievements are also rumoured to be coming to the D&D 4th Edition.
  • Deed thingies. if you played lotro, you'd know.

  • Rumor and not a big deal (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Avatar8 (748465) on Wednesday June 11 2008, @04:07PM (#23754751)
    First and foremost, this is a rumor. As the FA suggests, it could be a doctored screen since "PvP" is listed twice and having a title like "Quest Dude" is not in keeping with Blizzard's style.

    Even if it does get implemented, I don't see this as a system for "grinding." I also play LotRO on those rare occasions when I don't feel like playing WoW. Yes, this appears to be exactly like the Deeds system. In LotRO those are not achievements you intentionally pursue; they're objectives that you just happen to complete while you're playing, or you might complete most of them and discover "If I visit that one last farm, I'll get X." I'd see this having the same effect in WoW. I doubt the rewards for such easily achievable tasks would be great either, just like in LotRO. They're beneficial, but they're not game altering or anything that you cannot play without.

    Regardless, we'll keep playing with or without any rewards because playing the game and having a good time is the reward.

    • Actually, it looked like it would add even more grind to the game. It was all "Do random mundane task X million times".

      There are enjoyable aspects to WoW, but in my experience, the farther along you get, the more boring it gets. I've been playing for about 2 years now, and haven't even got one char to 70. In fact, my account is currently inactive, and I've not decided if I'll pay it up again. I'm halfway through lvl 65 and just that half of a level has taken me over 4 months. There are things I'm looki
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